Lady Gaga Does Performance Art at Her Fame Fragrance Masquerade Ball

Lady Gaga closed out New York Fashion Week with quite a performance at a black-tie masquerade party, held at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC, to launch her new fragrance, Fame. It wasn't the type of performance that might have been expected from an international pop star, however.

Apparently, Gaga is having a Marina Abramović moment. Instead of bringing down the house with a song or two, she enacted a performance art piece entitled "Sleeping with Gaga," which ended with her being tattooed on the back of the head. In fact, for the entire first hour of last night, Gaga rested—unbeknownst to guests—in the oversized black Fame perfume bottle that occupied the center of the room.

After photographer Steven Klein premiered the five-minute Fame fragrance film he directed—featuring Gaga, guns, and lots of latex—the egg-shaped centerpiece illuminated, revealing the singer asleep inside. Attendees were invited to reach through a hole in the bottle, where they could touch Gaga's well-manicured hand and attempt to awaken her. Marc Jacobs, wearing crystal devil horns, was one of the stream of guests who partook, although to little avail.

More From ELLE

Olivier Theyskens didn't participate in the hand-touching, but he embraced the concept. "I really like what she does," he told ELLE.com of Gaga. "I think for people who want to touch her, it's a moment, right?" And as Crystal Renn pointed out, "Not only is Gaga the performance, we're all the performance, I think, just by participating."

Eventually the singer snapped to life and spritzed herself with a little Fame. Muscular, shirtless men in black leather harnesses traversed the audience, passing out perfume cards emanating with the scent. Renn, for one, was a fan of the fragrance. "I have to say, I'm pretty excited about it," she said. "I like that it's not so feminine—it kind of has a masculinity to it, even though it's a girl's perfume."

Pamela Love, meanwhile, confessed, "I'm not a big perfume person. I love the smell of cucumbers, and I love the smell of cookies." And Jason Wu, an admitted "huge Lady Gaga fan," noted that he was "biased" when it came to judging scents. "I have one. It's my candle, Orchid Rain."

Theyskens, on the other hand, hasn't tried his hand at fragrance—a fact he partially blames on what he says are his olfactory shortcomings. "I would like to have the capacity of a dog, to be able to smell way more," he said. "Even when I've worked in companies that are doing perfumes, I always felt like I didn't have the ability to be able to really work on a perfume, because I can't smell like a dog can."